Experiencing Information

Just got wind of a relatively new open web legal called PreCYdent. Their mission is clear:

“PreCYdent is based on two fundamental principles. First, we at PreCYdent believe that all lawyers, law librarians, law students, and the general public should have access to state-of-the-art search technology to help them navigate through the large and complex body of legal authority. We have heard law students ask, as perhaps you have, about online legal research: “Why can’t I just do my search with a few search words, like I do on Google?” PreCYdent has an answer to that question: Now you can. Second, we believe judicial opinions and statutes must be in the public domain, in practice as well as in theory. To us this means that effective legal research in all of these materials should be free to the user — not expensive, not inexpensive. Free. We believe this principle is of vital importance not only to the United States, but to all nations that practice or aspire to practice the rule of law.”

Yes, it’s a Google-like search experience but clunky and a little rough around the edges in terms of interaction and visual design. Still, up front prior to conducting a search there are few options–you really just enter keywords and go. Then, on the results side of things there are plenty of key filters.

It’s still in its alpha mode right now, so could turn out to be rather promising. Since it allows users to upload legal documents, it could turn into a very comprehensive collection much in the same way Wikipedia is for some of us THE place to turn for encyclopedic information.

Just came across Managed Q, a search application the inventors describe as “dedicated to helping you manage your entire Search Experience: from the keyword, to results, to previewing, to refinement and repeating with a new query.”

The entity extraction around person, place, and thing seems fairly good. But I’m particularly interested in how you interact with the entities. Just by rolling over any one of them, you can see the precise locations in the found documents where that term appears. Niffty.

Of course, to do this they also only show images of the pages found. That’s right–no text list. Even the paging navigation show thumbnails of the next or previous pages. There are a few interaction problems here and there, but overall it’s quite an interesting experience. I like the thumbnail browse view–it’s helpful for somes types of queries and information seeking.

Kevin Kelly has a very interesting post in his book in progress The Technium. Victor tipped me off to this (thanks Victor). Check out Better Than Free.

The internet allows for easily made and distributed copies: copies of documents, music, photos, whatever. Kelly asks some good questions:

“If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?”
[...]

why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing? “

He then identified eight values that can’t be easily copied or cloned, which he calls generatives:

• Immediacy - How quickly do you get the copy of the thing you need?
• Personalization - To what degree is the copy customized to your tastes and needs?
• Interpretation - What services help you better understand or enjoy the copy?
• Authenticity - Is the copy what it says it is?
• Accessibility - How do I access the copy?
• Embodiment - How is the copy represented and presented?
• Patronage - Can I support the creator of the copy even if I can get it for free?
• Findability - How hard or easy is it for me to find the copy?

The recalls a recent talk I saw online of Chris Anderson, of Long Tail fame, speaking about the Abundance Ecomony. (Sorry - can’t find the video right now). If everything is moving towards being free or virtually free, how do businesses monetize their services? Advertising..yes, OK. But it looks like Kevin Kelly has given us a more robust framework to consider yet different ways.

I know Kelly mentions Authenticity, but I’d like to see more about credibility and authority too. Given the recent boom of credibility with the work of BJ Fogg, for one, that seems important enough to be a high-level generative. I guess Experience would come under Embodiment, but I’d have liked to have seem that more prominent or explicit.

I read The Myths of Innovation a while ago and am now just getting around to reviewing it. Originally, I wanted to review it for Boxes and Arrows, but James Robertson beat me to it. See his review on Boxes and Arrows. (Ironically, but not coincidently, I edited that review for B&A).

————————————————

The Myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun (O’Reilly, 2007) ISBN: 0596527055, $24.99 ($16.49 on Amazon.com), 162 pages.

Innovation is the new black. It’s on the lips on many companies these days, regardless of industry or sector. Just look at the slogans, mottos, and company values out there. You’d think everyone is innovating. Many self-proclaimed innovators, however, are actually higly risk-averse organizations fiercely protecting the status quo, whether they know it or not.

Sure, these companies are well-managed and successful. But that doesn’t mean they are innovators. In fact, Clayton Christensen, professor at Harvard, might say that many established companies are in what calls an “innovator’s dilemma”: The same management techniques that have made them industry leaders also hinder them from developing disruptive technologies that ultimately steal away their markets. See his best-selling book, The Innovator’s Delimma.

In The Myths of Innovation, author Scott Berkun also points out that many traditional companies aren’t motivated to change:

“It’s both a psychological and economical phenomenon: as people and companies age, they have more to lose. They’re not willing to spend years chasing dreams or to endanger what they’ve worked so hard to build. Attitudes focus on security, risk aversion, and optimization of the status quo eventually become dominant positions, and even become organizational policy at companies that were once young, nimble, and innovative. Even its success enabled it to grow into mainstream business, diminishing their interest and capacity for new ideas.” (p. 62).

He also writes: “Few managers recognize that their training and experience, designed to protect what exists, work against the forces needed for innovation.” (p. 96).

But by definition, innovation means being open to new ideas: something has to change for an innovation to take place. Innovation also requires taking some kind of risk. Of course, risk isn’t a bad thing—it brings opportunity as well. The problem is that not everyone likes new ideas or risk, and that’s a problem, which the Berkun discusses in Chapter 4.

More importantly, there is a prevailing oversimplified view of innovation fueled by myths. Myths, in general, provide compact, uncomplicated ways of understanding the past. And the field of innovation it is no different. “We want innovation explained in neat packages.” (p. 71). People like romantic stories about the secret magical moment that spawned a new innovation, for instance. As a result, misconceptions about innovation arise.

Berkun makes it very clear throughout the book that innovation doesn’t happen this way. Instead, there many processes involved, and the road to innovation is rarely a straight line. This view of innovation is refreshing, and it’s a true strength of the book. Berkun clearly takes a holistic view on innovation, describing it ecology rather than a single method or process.

Innovation is like a complex puzzle, he says, filled with trial and error. And like a doing a jigsaw puzzle, rarely are you able to pick up a piece and have it fit on the first try. A good example of this (one not mentioned in the book) is the development of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. The inventor, Sir James Dyson, is reported to have gone through 5126 prototypes before getting to the final product on the market today. (See: “Failure Doesn’t Suck”). This also recalls a saying by Thomas Alva Edison: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

So generally you don’t have a single, lone innovativor who then has a moment of epiphany. The idea of the apple falling on Newton’s head–an apocryphal tale at best–is nice for grade school classes, but has little to do with the years of hard work and trial and error he went through, not to mention the hundreds of influences from the outside. Berkun illustrates the complicated road to successful innovation with many compelling examples throughout the book.

The problem is that many organizations aren’t set up for failure and creative exploration. There are often very clear objectives with a high price tag associated with them, as well as many jobs riding on any business initiative. Most work environments simply don’t foster creativity and innovative thinking. This is a loss of potential innovation. “The truth is that we all have innate skills for solving problems and finding ideas: we’ve just lost our way.” (p. 83).

Another myth: we believe that good ideas will look their part in a very obvious way, and we expect to recognize an innovation on sight. The first computer mouse, as Berkun points out, was an ugly block of wood with a wheel and cord. No one saw it and thought, “Wow. This is going to help revolutionize the accessibility of computers to non-computer specialists.” Or consider this: how many people said after the Wright brothers’ first short, wobbly flight, “This invention is clearly the beginning of a multi-billion dollar industry that will change the world”? There were no crowds in Kitty Hawk that day to cheer on the innovation. In fact, it took six years before they even sold the first airplane.

A recent article in Business Week entitled “The Long Nose of Innovation” by Bill Buxton reinforces this notion. I blogged this previously. He writes: “An idea may well start with an invention, but the bulk of the work and creativity is in that idea’s augmentation and refinement.” Ideas sometimes need lots of time to get traction on their way to becoming true innovations.

The problem is that people judge superficial aspects of ideas and not their potential. And don’t expect management to be able to recognize an innovation when they see it. As Berkun reminds us, they very often can’t; managers don’t necessarily know any more about innovation than you do. This recalls a statement by Alan Kay, a well-known researcher at Xerox PARC, who once said: “It takes almost as much creativity to understand a good idea as to have it in the first place.”

Though The Myths of Innovation isn’t really a how-to book, Berkun does offer some practical advice at a few points. For instance, he offers five key areas for managers to focus on when managing innovation:

1. Give ideas life. Avoid idea killers, like “we tried that” and “it’ll never work. Fund and support initiatives that generate ideas
2. Create an innovative environment. “The Nerf toys, open architecture and fun vibe at Google’s headquarters aren’t gimmicks; the environment is supportive of ideas and collaboration, which helps innovations move through the organization.” (p. 103).
3. Protect innovators and innovations from management and administration. Shield ideas and the people behind them from idea killers.
4. Execute on your ideas. Ideas must be realized to become innovations. Develop prototypes and proof of concepts.
5. Persuade others that you have the right idea. The most successful innovators spend as much time selling their ideas as they do building their inventions.

But even if managed well, the best ideas don’t always win, the topic of Chapter 8. Building a better mousetrap doesn’t mean you’ve succeeded. First, you need to convince and persuade others to encourage your idea. Innovators must be persistent evangelizers. Then, even if you get internal funding or support, you have to be concerned about whether users will adopt your innovation. Understanding your target population helps increase the predictability with which a group will adopt your innovations.

The subject of adopting an innovation is precisely why user researchers and designers should be highly interested in this book. We designers are by nature very concerned with how people will experience the new thing we are making. By definition, this underlies design work in general.

To illustrate this point, elsewhere Berkun has said:

“Successful innovators spend as much time understanding the people they are designing for, their beliefs, feelings, values, and needs, as they do the technologies they’re using to build innovations, and the book offers the fundamentals on how to do this. So, the superiority of your mousetrap is sure nice in an ivory-tower setting, but if people—customers—can’t see why it’s superior, then the superiority is just your opinion. And sadly, I don’t know anyone who has made millions solely on the superiority of their own opinion.”

A key aspect of innovation, then, is the adoption or non-adoption of the innovation. Of course, Everett Rogers outlined five key factors for understanding adoption of innovations in his oft-cited book The Diffusions of Innovation decades ago. Berkun summarizes these concepts briefly, which are:

• Relative advantage: How do users perceive the value of the new thing compared to the old?
• Compatibility: How well does the innovation fit in with the existing values, past experiences and current needs of potential adopters?
• Complexity: How easy or hard is it to learn to use the new thing?
• Trialability: Can it be tested?
• Observability: What does it look like?

Have a look at this brief essay I wrote on the five factors of adopting an innovation back in 2001.

Finally, Chapter 9–“Problems and solutions”–is one of the more intriguing parts of the book. (At least it was for me). Innovation isn’t only about solutions, but also about finding the right problems to solve and framing them in the right way. “Discovering problems actually requires just as much creativity as discovering solutions” (p. 128). This reminded me of a quote from Don Norman I recently came across in an interview with Peter Merholz. Norman advises designers:

“Do not solve the problem that’s asked of you. It’s almost always the wrong problem. Almost always when somebody comes to you with a problem, they’re really telling you the symptoms and the first and the most difficult part of design is to figure out what is really needed to get to the root of the issue and solve the correct problem.”

The example from The Myths of Innovation I particularly like comes from Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, the makers of Quicken. He apparently realized that the greatest competitor wasn’t other software programs, but the pencil. Reframing the problem in this way (i.e., to compete with the pencil) allowed them to develop one of the most widely-used personal finance software packages out there.

So, what does it mean to be innovative, then? Maybe nothing. Maybe companies should just focus on creating great customer experiences and, if innovation happens—even disruptive innovation—then let it. Berkun himself encourages us to stop using the word in a blog post (see: Stop saying innovation—here’s why). “It doesn’t mean anything anymore,” he writes.

Overall, in The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun dissects and debunks the perceived simplicity of innovation and reveals its true complexity. This short book paints a broad picture of innovation from a historical perspective and includes many great examples—real eye-openers.

It is a well-written book with a sprinkling of good humor to kept things interesting. His style is accessible and conversational to just about any target group. The small, bite-sized chapters let’s you move quickly through the concepts without getting sidetracked.

With 150 pages of text at a price of about 16 bucks, you have no excuse for not buying and reading this book. It’s well worth it.

Quotes from the Book:

“Technology prowess matters much less than we think in the diffusion of innovation.” (p. 65)

“[Innovators] grow so focused on creating things that they forget that those innovations are good only if people can use them.” (p. 66)

“All innovations today are bound to innovation of the past.”

“Einstein said ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’ but you’d be hard-pressed to find schools or corporations that invest in people with those priorities.” (p. 83)

“The dirty little secret—the fact often denied—is that unlike the mythical epiphany, real creation is sloppy.” (p. 86)

“Talent is only as good as the environment it’s in.” (p. 96)

“It’s easy to assume that the manager has a better perspective on the viability of an idea, perhaps from her superior experience and knowledge of the industry. But these are exactly the factors that also work against innovation: high experience and confidence make people the greatest resistors to new ideas as they have the most to lose.” (p. 98)

“Good managers of innovation recognize that they are in primary control over the environment, and it’s up to them to create a place for talented people to do their best work.” (p. 103)

“The idealism of goodness and the notion that goodness wins is tempered by the limits and irrationalities of people’s willingness to try new things, the culture of the era, and the events of the time.” (p. 124)

“No one asked Galileo to explain the solar system, Engelbart to invent the mouse, or Bell to create the telephone. They saw unidentified problems in the world and dedicated themselves to defining and solving them.” (p. 127)

“Making the simple complex is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

-Charles Mingus

Just came across the results of a new study commissioned by the British Library and JISC about information behavior of the “Google generation.” These are people born after around 1993. Here is a direct link to the full report.

Broadly, the intent is to see if younger people search for information in new ways and the consequences that might have on their own research behavior later as well as on how information system get developed.

“The untested assumption is that this generation is somehow qualitatively `different’ from what went before: that they have different aptitudes, attitudes, expectations and even different communication and information ‘literacies’ and that these will somehow transfer to their use of libraries and information services as they enter higher education and research careers.”

Since a longitudinal study (the optimal method) was not feasible, the researchers first reviewed literature on information behavior of young people from the last 30 years. This was supplement with fresh data by looking at online search behavior, profiling users by age.

The study identifies six key characteristics of digital information seeking. These should ring a bell to you, but I’ve not quite seen them formulated like this:

• Horizontal information seeking - Skimming lots of information quickly
• Navigation - “People in virtual libraries spend a lot of time simply finding their way around: in fact they spend as much time finding their bearings as actually viewing what they find.” (Note that “time” is the critical aspect of this behavior).
• Viewers - People don’t spend nearly as much time reading online as in the traditional sense. The researchers call this “power browsing.”
• Squirreling behavior - Stashing away information in forms of downloads for later use, particularly free content (though it’s rarely re-visited by the downloader).
• Diverse users - One size does not fit all for any one system.
• Checkers - “Users assess authority and trust for themselves in a matter of seconds by dipping and cross-checking across different sites and by relying on favoured brands (e.g. Google).” Note here the emphasis on “brand” in relationship to Google.

Some observations made in the study about the Google generation:

• Information literacy is not higher among young people. Their adeptness with computer may actually hide a deeper, more-troubling illiteracy.
• Young searchers find information fast, but spend very little time assessing the quality and authority of information found.
• Active contemplation of information needs is often low, and young searchers prefer to express themselves in natural language.
• Determining relevance in a long list of documents is difficult for younger searchers.

They sum up: “There is little direct evidence that young people’s information literacy is any better or worse than before.”

This suggests to me that things like brand and ease of use will become more important for this generation. But that’s not necessarily a good thing, now, is it? Still, the design of systems in the future will change and become much more critical than the technologies that drive them alone.

While the Google generation is generally better with technology, there are some myths around this group. For instance, they are not expert searchers, and they may not find their peers (i.e., social networks) more credible than traditional sources of authority. Nor does the Google generation necessarily prefer smaller bits of information to full text compared to an older generation.

Further, increase in reliance on the internet for information is changing across all generations, even the Silver Surfers:

“In many ways the Google generation label is increasingly unhelpful: recent research finds that it is not even accurate within the cohort of young people that it seeks to stereotype.”

Getting information skills is as critical as even with the Google generation.

This is an interesting way to get engagement and hold attention. Give it a second to get going.

http://producten.hema.nl/

Is this a playful design of yours, Kars?